My perspective on the man-made reasons of the Uttarakhand flood disaster

Even though this disaster was brought about by an extreme rain event which could be symptomatic of climate change effects (8 times the highest expected rain in a day, 20 days before schedule, in geologically unstable valleys), the real causes of the destruction lie in the typically Indian situation of

• poor governance; 
• inadequate enforcement of local building and development laws and by-laws due to local politics; 
• exponential rise in religious tourism from an emerging middle class that is intensely religious; 
• and most importantly, haywire river training and management, with very little long term thinking. 

In my mind, the only effective remedy of the situation has been frequently identified, but which is never effectively applied: improved local governance. This state, like much of north India, has been traditionally a strong society, with a weak state, as explored in detail in Sh. Gurcharan Das's new book, India Grows at Night. Whether it be building by-laws to avoid riverbeds and floodplains or laws around disposal of muck from hydropower sites, the enforcement is weak and often over-ridded by politically connected individuals, who consider the formal State a mere irritant at best and an adversary at worst.

The climate change effects of worsening adverse rain events, more rain in lesser time, can be handled if there is social agreement (resulting in political consensus) on how to run the state to avoid further such disasters. However, like always, the political bickering has already started, without any consensus on how to handle these issues.

Even though this disaster was brought about by a weather event, the failure of the state in preemption and response is not any different from similar failures from those in the Nirbhaya gangrape case, the frequent terrorist attacks, the slowing growth, the policy gridlock or rampant general misgovernance. The state of affairs can be remedied not by technological solutions, but by a consensus for a stronger state. This call for a stronger and more effective and responsive state can be seen in the recent quasi-political movements led by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, who seem to be reflecting the political wishes of an emerging middle class. However, this demand is currently being thwarted by the entrenched polity, which is responsive to the traditional richer farmers of the country and the Delhi elite. However, this elite can only delay the takeover of power by the emerging middle class, not deny it.

Recently, I wrote a response on someone's FB status after the Amartya Sen article in the New York Times on Why China is ahead of India. I'd like to copy it here: Culture, work ethic, attitude and a value system that places personal integrity over personal benefit are usually derived from a common societal belief system, a 'Higher Ideal', if you will.
This system can be based on religion in many countries (eg Israel and Saudi Arabia); common ethnicity in some other countries (eg Japan, Germany, Poland, China and most African countries); the Constitution in the US and Ataturk's Turkey; Communism in several erstwhile Communist countries or shared experiences from a recent turmoil (post-War Korea and perhaps now Sri Lanka).
Would it be fair to say that India (and perhaps South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil as well) misses out such a common thread, unlike most other World powers? Forcible secularization of the State in a deeply religious country after Independence and an inadequately trusted Constitution mean that, as a people, we don't have a higher ideal to believe in. And money steps in to become that ideal! Hence the for-sale politicians, the for-sale bureaucrats, the for-sale regulators and the for-sale Railway Board members!
Does the answer lie either in a more representative Constitution or a State more representative of the country's religious beliefs?

My personal quick take on structural factors for India's blackouts

[This blog post is a quick personal view by an energy sector professional on India's blackouts this week. These should not be taken to be the views of the organization the author is affiliated to, its management or its Board of Directors]

The last 2 days have been absolutely crazy. They are now calling it the world's biggest blackout ever. At least we do something better than the rest of the world ;)
In all honesty, it's a surprise this thing doesn't happen more often. The electricity system, like several other critical systems in India, is ill-managed, politically interfered with and treated as a public good, to be distributed by benevolent (read malignant) politicians.

The forensics on the root cause of these two gigantic failures is yet to be done, but such problems rarely occur only because of a failure or two. They are usually the manifestation of several simmering problems. They usually reveal several vulnerable spots in a system. And India's power system has many many festering challenges. I'll go into several of them in a bit.


India's electricity system is big and complex, but not exceptionally bigger or more complex than many other countries. Close to a third of the people are not served by the sector, yet. Several problems exist. The immediate crisis, I believe, may have been triggered due to overdrawing by the large agricultural states trying to give power to farmers to pump groundwater to compensate for a real poor monsoon this year.

However, several other reasons have contributed to the problem. The demand is increasing at a healthy 6-7% annually, while new capacity additions have been severely constrained of late. New coal-fired capacity is not getting enough coal from state-run monopoly of Coal India (problems of which are worthy of its own library of books!), hydropower is facing rehabilitation challenges and nuclear power seems to be taking forever, like the rest of the world. India's energy and peak generation capacity face shortfalls of almost 10% on a daily basis, despite more than a quarter of the population still unconnected to the grid! These shortfalls create perfect conditions for demand/supply imbalance, which gets worsened by agricultural demand, triggering rolling black-outs like we have seen in the past 48 hours.

However, there is a massive socio-political and financial angle to the electricity crisis. India's power system does not recover the costs of generation and supply of electricity from its consumers. Despite the intention of the regulatory structures, the sector is not allowed to run on commercial principles. There is close to $42 billion (close to 3% of GDP) of accumulated deficits in the distribution companies' accounts, since local politicians fight tariff increases tooth and nail. For context, while India's electricity deficits have crosses 3% of GDP this year, at the peak of the mortgage crisis in the US, the payment deficits (or accumulated non-performing loans) were less than 1% of that country's GDP!

 In such dire financial circumstances, there is no incentive for private investors to invest in new capacity, since their payments will be at risk, further worsening the power crisis. Already, close to 1.2% of GDP growth annually is cannibalized by lack of electricity for industries and other sectors.  Several recent news articles and features have focused on the deep electricity crisis faced by industries almost throughout the country.

The media share significant blame. Whenever a state tries to raise tariffs to cover costs of supplying electricity, media hounds the brave local politicians, painting the latter as anti-poor. Electricity is seen as a social good, with several politicians fighting elections promising to improve supply. Due to the certain brouhaha by the media such a move causes, state level politicians are loath to allow tariff increases, preferring to let state-owned distribution companies run large deficits. The system is used a vote-pulling machine, not a critical part of the country's infrastructure.

It should be said India's legislative structure around the electricity structure is robust. However, socio-political factors do not let the technocrats run a reasonable system that provides service to the poor and for growth. Excessive political interference, with negative and uninformed media coverage and poor understanding in the general population allow problems to fester.

If the world's biggest electricity failure is not a wake up call, we will sleep while our country's economy burns. However, if this lack of electricity has jolted the players into action (pun intended), this could be a crisis too good to waste, to bring about the many necessary changes in the country's system.

Understanding Partition: Indian Summer: Book of the year about India..

Understanding Indian Partition has never been easy for the Indians born and brought up under the New Education Policy of 1986, under which the treatment of Partition has been wishy-washy at best and guarded at its worst.
A recent book by Alex von Tunzelmann, a new Oxford historian called Indian Summer is so far the finest, non-partisan insightful treatment of 1947 that I 've read so far. People who know me know that understanding the time between 3rd June 1947 (when Partition was announced by Mountbatten) and 15th August 1947 has been close to an obsession for me and hence I've seen various treatments of those times. The best of times, the worst of times...
A nation emerged out of a cauldron of violence, mis-trust and skulduggery, protected by vision, effort and a remarkable group of people who balanced each other out.
von Tunzelmann understands and delineates the social and political fabric of the time and role of each of the players and brings out the roles played by each of the major characters, including that of Edwina, often overlooked by other designation-obsessed historians.
Highly recommended...